The Criminalist’s Paradox as a Counterexample to the Principle of Total Evidence

Michał Sikorski (Marche Polytechnic University)

The Senior Professorship for Theoretical Philosophy at Heinrich Heine University kindly invites you to attend the talk by Dr. Michał Sikorski within the Research Colloquium, from 6:30pm to 8pm (CET) on May 27, 2025.

Abstract: The principle of total evidence says that all relevant information should be considered when making an inference about a hypothesis. We will argue that the criminalist's paradox from the literature on the methodology of forensic science constitutes a counterexample against the principle of total evidence. The paradox arises, for example, when a forensic scientist uses the results from other forensic proce-dures to inform their own analysis. In such cases, their results can become more reliable, but at the same time, also dependent on those other forensic results, and therefore less useful for decisions in court cases. Consequently, such influences are generally avoided in forensic science. We argue that structurally similar problems also plague other scientific disciplines, anticipate an objection to the counterexample, and propose two new versions of the principle of total evidence that do not fall prey to the criminalist's paradox.

Speaker: Michał Sikorski is a postdoctoral researcher at the PRIN PNRR project “Controlling and Utilizing Uncer-tainty in the Health Sciences”. He obtained his MA at the University of Barcelona and his PhD in 2020 at the University of Turin. His interests include normative issues in the philosophy of science, such as scientific objectivity or self-correction, the philosophy of psychology, the philosophy of forensic sci-ence, and the semantics of conditionals.

Michał Sikorski's talk will be held in a hybrid format: in person in Room 24.53 01.81 and with the option to join via Zoom. For the Zoom link, please email [email protected]. We look forward to your participation.